Louder than any seraph’s song

When they make him the object of all their trust, they glorify him; when the say, “Though I am the chief of sinners, yet, I trust him; though my mind is dark, and though my temptations abound, I believe that he can save to the uttermost; I do trust him.” Christ is more glorified by a sinner’s humble faith than by a seraph’s loudest song. If you believe, you do glorify him. Child of God, are you tonight very dark and dull and heavy? Do you feel half dead, spiritually? Come to your Lord’s feet and kiss them, and believe that he can save, no, that he has saved you, even you; and thus you will glorify his holy name. “Oh!” said a believer the other day, “I know whom I have believed; Christ is mine…”

Ah, you may sit at the Lord’s table wearing a fine dress or a diamond ring, and you may think that you are somebody of importance, but you are not! Ah, you may come to the Lord’s table and say, “Here is an experienced Christian man who knows a thing or two.”You are not glorifying Christ that way; you are only a nobody. But if you come tonight saying, “Lord, I am hungry, you can feed me,”that is glorifying him. if you come saying, “Lord, I have no merit and no worthiness, I come because you have died for me, and I trust you,” you are glorifying him.

Charles Spurgeon, “Christ’s Pastoral Prayer for His People.” Spurgeon’s Sermons on Prayer. Pg 410-411 (Hendrickson P 2007)

When any doubt or question arises

Therefore, whensoever, or wheresoever, any doubt or question arises of salvation, or our justification before God, there the law and all good works must be utterly excluded and stand apart, that grace may appear free, and that the promise and faith may stand alone: which faith alone, without law or works, brings thee in particular to the justification and salvation, through the mere promise and free grace of God in Christ; so that I say, in the action and office of justification, both law and words are to be utterly excluded and exempted as things which have nothing to do in that behalf. The reason is this: for seeing that all our redemption springs out from the body of the Son of God crucified, then is there nothing that can stand us in stead, but that only wherewith the body of Christ i s apprehended. Now, for as much as neither the law nor works but faith only, is the thing which apprehends the body and passion of Christ, therefore faith only is that matter which justifies a man before God, through the strength of that object, Jesus Christ, which it apprehends.

Edward Fisher, The Marrow of Modern Divinity (1645. 1649; New York: Westminster, n.d.). 21.

( Taken from J.V Fesko, “Justification in Church History.”  Justification: Understanding the Classic Reformed Doctrine, Pg 33 (P&R P).)

Discover their emptiness and the Spirit’s fullness.

By persuading us of the eternal and unchangeable love of the Father, [the Holy Spirit] fills us with consolation. And, indeed, all the effects of the Holy Ghost before mentioned have their tendency this way. Of this love and its transcendent excellency you heard at large before. Whatever is desirable in it is thus communicated to us by the Holy Ghost. A sense of this is able not only to relieve us, but to make us in every condition to rejoice with joy unspeakable and glorious. It is not with an increase of corn, and wine, and oil, but with the shining of the countenance of God upon us, that he comforts our souls (Ps 4:6-7).

‘The world hates me,’ may such a soul as has the Spirit say, ‘but my Father loves. Men despise me as a hypocrite; but my Father loves me as a child. I am poor in this world; but I have a rich inheritance in the love of my Father. I am straitened in all things; but there is bread enough in my Father’s house. I mourn in secret under the power of my lusts and sin, where no eyes see me; but the Father sees me, and is full of compassion. With a sense of his kindness, which is better than life, I rejoice in tribulation, glory in affliction, triumph as a conqueror. Though I am killed all the day long, all my sorrows have a bottom that may be fathomed–my trials, bounds that may be compassed; but the breadth, and depth, and height of the love of the Father, who can express?’

I might render glorious this way of the Spirit’s comforting us with the love of the Father, by comparing it with all other causes and means of joy and consolation whatever; and so discover their emptiness, its fullness–their nothingness, its being all; as also by revealing the proprieties of it before rehearsed.

John Owen. “Our Comforter.” Communion with God. Pg 410-411 (Christian Focus P 2007)

When our faith wavers

We make the freely given promise of God the foundation of faith because upon it faith properly rests. Faith is certain that God is true in all things whether he command or forbid, whether he promise or threaten; and it also obediently receives his commandments, observes his prohibitions, heeds his threats. Nevertheless, faith properly begins with the promise, rests in it, and ends in it. For in God faith seeks life: a life that is not found in commandments or declarations of penalties, but in the promise of mercy and only in a freely given promise. For a conditional promise that sends us back our own works does not promise life unless we discern its presence in ourselves. Therefore, if we would not have our faith tremble and waver, we must buttress it with the promise of salvation, which is willingly and freely offered to us by the Lord in consideration of our mercy rather than our deserts…

Therefore, when we say that faith must rest upon a freely given promise, we do not deny that believers embrace and grasp the Word of God in ever respect: but we point out the promise of mercy as the proper goal of faith. As on the one hand believers ought to recognize God to be Judge and Avenger of wicked deeds, yet on the other hand they properly contemplate his kindness, since he is so described to them as to be considered “one who is kind” (Ps 86:5), “and merciful” (Ps 103:8), “far from anger and of great goodness” (Ps 103:8), ” pouring out his mercy upon all his works” (Ps 145:9).

John Calvin. Institutes of the Christian Religion. 3.2.29.

What I discover every day–I am powerless.

Suppose a man chosen in the eternal love of the Father, redeemed by the blood of the Son, and justified freely by the grace of God, so that he has a right to all of the promises of the gospel; yet this person can by no reasonings nor arguings of his own heart, by no considerations of the promises themselves, nor of the love of God or grace of Christ in them, be brought to any establishment in peace, until it be produced in him as a fruit and consequent of the work of the Holy Ghost in him and towards him. ‘Peace’ is the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22). The savour of the Spirit is ‘life and peace’ (Rom. 8:6). All we have is from and by him.

John Owen. “The Result in Our Hearts.” Communion with God. Pg 392-393 (Christian Focus P 2007).

Bible: Not abstract philosophy, but personal history.

What the Christian goes on to confess about that God is not summarized by him in a number of abstract terms, but is described, rather, as a series of deeds done by God in the past, in the present, and to be done in the future. It is the deeds, the miracles, of God which constitute the confession of the Christian. What the Christian confesses in his creed is a long, a broad, and a high history. It is a history which comprises the whole world in its length and breadth, in its beginning, process, and end in it origin, development, and destination, from the point of creation to the fulfillment of ages. The confession of the church is a declaration of the mighty deeds of God.

Those deeds are numerous and are characterized by great diversity. But they constitute a strict unity. They are related to each other, prepare for each other, and are interdependent. There is order and pattern, development and upward movement in it. It proceeds from creation through redemption to sanctification and glorification. The end returns to the beginning and yet is at the same time the apex which is exalted high above the point of origin. The deeds of God form a circle which mounts upward in the form of a spiral; they represent a harmony of the horizontal and the vertical line; they move upwards and forwards at the same time.

God is the architect and builder of all those deeds, the source and the final end of them. Out of Him and through HIm and to Him are all things. He is their Maker, Restorer and the Fulfiller. The unity and diversity in the works of God proceeds from and returns to the unity and diversity which exit in the Divine Being. That Being is one being , single and simple. At the same time that being is three fold in His person, in His revelation, and in His influence. The entire work of God is an unbroken whole, and nevertheless comprises the riches variety and change. The confession of the church comprehends the whole of world history. In that confession are included the moments of the creation and the fall, reconciliation and forgiveness, and of renewal and restoration. It is a confession which proceeds from the triune God and which leads everything back to Him.

Therefore the article of the holy trinity is the heart and core of our confession, the differentiating earmark of our religion, and the praise and comfort of all true believers of Christ.

Herman Bavinck. “The Divine Trinity.” Our Reasonable Faith: A Survey of Christian Doctrine. Pg 144-145.

Miracles: Not magic tricks, but acts of redemption.

But for one exception, namely the cursing of the fig tree, all the miracles of Jesus are redemptive in kind. He did not come into the world to condemn the world, but to save it (John 3:17). In His miracles too, He is active as prophet, priest, and king; in them also He does the work which the Father has placed upon Him (John 4:34; 5:36; and 9:4).

This person of Christ is manifested even more clearly in the miracles which were done, not by Him but in Him and with Him. In those especially we see who and what He is. The supernatural conception, His miraculous life and death, His resurrection, ascension, and being seated at the right hand of God, these all are most peculiarly redemptive miracles. They prove, far better even that the works which He performed , His absolute power over sin and all its consequences, over Satan and Satan’s whole dominion. And they illustrate, more fully than those other works, that this power of the person of Christ is a redemptive, a regenerative, power, which will gain the final victory only in the new heaven and the new earth…

The end and object of all revelation, and of the miracles in that revelation, is the restoration of fallen mankind, the re-creation of the world, and the acknowledgment of God as God. Hence the miracles are not a strange and singular element in revelation, nor an arbitrary addendum to it. Rather, they are a necessary and indispensable component of revelation. They are themselves revelation.

Herman Bavinck. “The Manner of Special Revelation.” Our Reasonable Faith: A Survey of Christian Doctrine. Pg 70-71.

An impossible, free gift.

When one tells the that one has to receive this salvation as a free gift, because what is required is that we should be fit to stand in the presence of God, who is light, and in whom is no darkness at all, when they hear that we should be like the Lord Jesus Christ Himself and that we should conform to these various Beatitudes, they say, ‘Now that is making it impossible for us.’ They go astray, you see, about this whole question of righteousness. Righteousness to them means just being decent and moral up to a certain level. But we saw in our last chapter that that is a totally wrong definition of it. Righteousness ultimately means being like the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the standard… And of course, the moment we realize that, then we see that it is something we ourselves cannot do, and realize that we must therefore receive it as helpless paupers, as those who have nothing in our hands at all, as those who take it entirely as a free gift…

I once heard someone say who had just been listening to a sermon which emphasized human activity in this matter of salvation, ‘Thank God there is something for us to do after all.’ It shows that that kind of person just admits that he or she has never understood the meaning of his righteousness, has never seen the real nature of sin within, and has never seen the standard with which God confronts us. Those who have really understood what righteousness means never object to the fact that the gospel ‘makes it too easy’; they realize that apart from it they would be left entirely without hope, utterly lost. ‘Nothing in my hand I bring, Simply to Thy cross I cling’–is the statement for everyone who has truly seen the position.

Therefore, to object to the gospel because it ‘makes things too easy’, or to object to it because it makes things too difficult, is just virtually to confess that we are not Christians at all. The Christian is one who admits that the statements and the demands of the gospel are impossible, but thanks God that the gospel does the impossible for us and gives us salvation as a free git. ‘Blessed are they’, therefore ‘which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. ‘They can do nothing, but as they hunger and thirst for it, they shall be filled by it. There, then, is the test of our doctrinal test. And it is a very thoroughgoing test. But let us ever remember that the two aspects of the test must always be applied together.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones. “The Test of Spiritual Appetite.” Studies in the Sermon on the Mount. Pg 85-86 (IVP 1985). Paragraphing mine.

It will take me to Christ every time.

Accordingly each Christian continues to experience in his heart times of the Law and times of the Gospel. The times of the Law are discernible by heaviness of heart, by a lively sense of sin, and a feeling of despair brought on by the Law. These periods of the Law will come again and again as long as we live. To mention my own case. There are many times when I find fault with God and am impatient with Him. The wrath and the judgment of God displease me, my wrath and impatience displease Him. Then is the season of the Law, when “the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.”

The time of grace returns when the heart is enlivened by the promise of God’s mercy. It soliloquizes: “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? Can you see nothing but law, sin, death, and hell? Is there no grace, no forgiveness, no joy, peace, life, heaven, no Christ and God? Trouble me no more, my soul. Hope in God who has not spared His own dear Son but has given Him into death for thy sins.” When the Law carries things too far, say: “Mister Law, you are not the whole show. There are other and better things than you. They tell me to trust in the Lord…”

There are three ways in which the Law may be abused. First, by the self- righteous hypocrites who fancy that they can be justified by the Law. Secondly, by those who claim that Christian liberty exempts a Christian from the observance of the Law. “These,” says Peter, “use their liberty for a cloak of maliciousness,” and bring the name and the Gospel of Christ into ill repute. Thirdly, the Law is abused by those who do not understand that the Law is meant to drive us to Christ. When the Law is properly used its value cannot be too highly appraised. It will take me to Christ every time.

Luther, Martin (2009-01-12). Works of Martin Luther. Includes 95 Theses, Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, The Table Talk, Concerning Christian Liberty, Large and Small Catechism and more (Mobi Collected Works) (Kindle Locations 3075-3091). MobileReference. Kindle Edition.

 

The Comforter that stills our inner storms.

The soul, by the power of its own conscience, is brought before the law of God. There a man puts in his plea–that he is a child of God, that he belongs to God’s family; and for this end produces all his evidences, every thing whereby faith gives him an interest in God. Satan, in the meantime, opposes with all his might; sin and law assist him; many flaws are found in his evidences; the truth of them all is questioned; and the soul hangs in suspense as to the issue. In the midst of the plea and contest the Comforter comes, and, by a word of promises or otherwise, overpowers the heart with a comfortable persuasion (and bears down all objections) that his pleas is good, and that he is a child of God… When our spirits are pleading their right and title, he comes in and bears witness on our side; at the same time enabling us to put forth acts of filial obedience, kind and childlike; which is called ‘crying, Abba, Father’ (Gal 4:6).

Remember still the manner of the Spirit’s working, before mentioned–that he does it effectually, voluntarily, and freely. Hence sometimes the dispute hangs long–the cause is pleading many years. The law seems sometimes to prevail sin and Satan to rejoice; and the poor soul is filled with dread about its inheritance. Perhaps its own witness, from its faith, sanctification, former experience, keeps up the plea with some life and comfort; bu the work is not done, the conquest is not fully obtained, until the Spirit, who works freely and effectually, when and how he will, comes in with his testimony also; clothing his power with a word of promise, he makes  all parties concerned to attend to him and puts an end to the controversy.

In this he gives us holy communion with himself… There is something too great in it to be the effect of a created power. When the Lord Jesus Christ at one word stilled the raging of the sea and the wind, all that were with him knew there was divine power at hand (Matt. 8:25-7). And when the Holy Ghost by one word stills the tumults and storms that are raised in the soul, giving it an immediate calm and security, it nows his divine power, and rejoices in his presence.

John Owen. “The Effects of the Spirit in Us.” Communion with God. Pg 377-8 (Christian Focus P 2007)